


The One with the Pasta

by the_lanky_kat



Series: The Best Place for Us to Be (is by each others sides) [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged up characters, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Grocery Shopping, Keith is an Adult™, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Red's still a grumpy kitty, Shopping, Stop Lance From Grocery Shopping 2k17, Walmart, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 07:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11664834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_lanky_kat/pseuds/the_lanky_kat
Summary: Lance confronts Keith's eating habits (or lack thereof). They come to an "agreement": Keith helps Lance get groceries and Lance won't spend all of the money in Keith's wallet (it's more like blackmail). Shiro's surprised Keith didn't die before Lance was his roommate. Matt is the first shipper.





	The One with the Pasta

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I hope you all enjoy the fic and have a great day! :D

Lance sneaks into the kitchen stealthily, as to not wake the sleeping cat curled around the paper towel roll. He's in full ninja mode, sliding around in his blue cat socks across the laminated floor in the kitchen to decrease the sound of his footfalls.

Normally Lance wouldn't be up this late, but he's got a wicked craving for caprisun juice pouches, as is normal for 2 AM on a Saturday morning, his first Saturday morning away from Hunk. This is officially the third day that he's lived with Keith.

Arguably, the best part about living with Keith so far is how little he cares, in general. Hunk used to always scold Lance for his late night eating habits, but Keith hasn't even taken much of an interest in Lance at all. Just left him little notes telling him to clean up stuff when he spills it. But really, Keith is fairly uncaring about pretty much everything.

Juice spilled on the couch? Nobody cares because nobody sits there, just clean it up. Accidentally break a lamp? As long as it's paid for, nobody cares. Leave your dirty socks around? Well, Keith doesn't like that, but he's made it his personal mission to just generally avoid Lance at all costs so Lance rarely ever gets scolded. And if Lance has a craving for juice pouches he can just run to the store and get them. Keith doesn't really care.

It's nice, because no one is acting as a surrogate mom for Lance, but it also kind of sucks because Keith doesn't _care_ what happens. In the two days that Lance has lived in the apartment, he's seen Keith once. Keith was shoveling pop tarts into his face at 3 AM like a maniac while making a disturbing amount of eye contact with Lance the whole time as he stole away the box of pop tarts before stumbling back to his room. Lance still wonders what that was about.

Despite that odd interaction, Keith seemed like the kind of roommate that you'd get during your first year of college in the dorms that never stayed over and always came back high at 8 AM before class. It was kind of lonely, and a little awkward, but other than that things were about as good as they could get. Neither of them were dead yet, so that was a plus.

Lance made his way over to the fridge and pulled out a juice pouch, frowning at the overall emptiness of the fridge. Amongst his roommate's weird pop tart habits, the guy also seemed to have a thing for pasta. Last night, when Lance had snuck out of his room for a midnight snack of some gushers that were probably expired, he had noticed the odd number of containers in the fridge.

Due to the suspicious number of dishes drying overnight, Lance suspects a few things. 1) Keith has some _weird_ food habits. Maybe he has a pasta kink, but whatever. Lance isn't gonna judge. 2) Keith can't cook pasta, _at all_. After some snooping, it seemed that Keith had burnt not one, but two batches of pasta whenever he had made it. 3) Keith eats pasta without sauce, like an _animal_. There was no evidence of heating up sauce (if some had magically appeared in a cabinet overnight) nor any evidence of parmesan cheese.

Yeah, Lance is sort of freaked out by Keith. Just a little bit. Was he an axe murderer in secret or something? Lance wouldn't put it past Pidge to know an axe murderer.

Lance sighs and closes the refrigerator door, sneaking a glance at Red to make sure he didn't disturb the cat (who became grumpy whenever Lance entered the room). Red glares at Lance from her spot by the paper towel roll, but thankfully doesn't start yowling bloody murder like she did yesterday.

Lance quietly slinks back to his own room, ready to slurp his caprisun in peace, when he hears another door open. A stream of light floods the apartment when Keith opens his bedroom door, appearing to not have even gone to sleep. He looks dressed and everything!

Lance watches curiously as Keith shuffles over to Red and picks up the cat, who meows in an irritated manner at her owner. Despite looking ready to take on the day like it wasn't 2 AM, Keith looks pretty disheveled and almost... upset?

Lance isn't sure what to do with that information.

Keith snuggles Red to his body, murmuring something softly as he buries his head into her fur. Lance watches intrigued as Keith shuffles back to his room, shutting his door way to loudly for Lance's liking.

_Well that was weird._

He looks at Keith's door, wondering if he should go see if he's alright or not. Keith had looked kind of... strange, like he had a nightmare or something. Lance isn't a stranger to nightmares himself, so he wonders if he should check up on his roommate.

_We aren't exactly friends though..._

Lance almost convinces himself to go to the other boy's room and talk to him, but he chickens out before he can even take a step in Keith's general direction. The other has made it clear that they don't need to interact with each other, so Lance decides he's going to just leave Keith be. It's not like the guy _matters_ to him or anything. Nope, no, never, absolutely not.

Despite knowing that Keith would refuse his help if he offered it, Lance still feels guilt ridden as he lays in his own bed, staring at the ceiling. Maybe Lance can subtly offer his assistance. At least be a roommate who doesn't completely _ignore_ the person he lives with like a certain mullet-stricken emo he knows.

Lance decides he's going to figure out how to be Keith's acquaintance in the morning. Maybe he can offer to cook him something that _isn't_ three containers of plain pasta.

*****

Keith awakens to the sound of humming, and he's almost immediately annoyed. He's leaning against the headboard of his bed with Red purring contently in his lap. He's been dozing on and off since midnight, not bothering to get comfy because it's not like it'll help him sleep anyway. He's slept off and on for about six hours, which is more than he normally gets.

Keith decides that if he just lays in bed, he can give himself the illusion that he's actually resting for a few more hours.

But then a knock comes at his bedroom door, causing Red's purring to stop and an angry growl to rise in her throat. Keith agrees with her and decides to ignore the knock, closing his eyes and resuming stroking Red's fur.

And then the knocking comes again, this time with a voice that grates on Keith's nerves.

"I made waffles! Do you want some?" Lance asks, sounding way too chipper for 6 AM.

"Fuck off," Keith responds.

Can't he just live in peace? Can't Lance just mind his own business and leave Keith alone? Can't they just keep their interactions to a minimum?

"Dude, you need to eat something other than plain pasta," Lance insists.

Red stands up and hisses at the door. Keith agrees with her silently.

"Fuck. Off."

"I'm serious. All we have in our fridge is, like, five caprisun juice pouches, a jar of pickle juice, a singular piece of sketchy looking beef jerky, and three containers full of assorted pasta. Do you literally eat pasta for every meal of every day?" Lance admonishes.

Keith ponders that. He knows he eats a ton of pasta, but he also eats other stuff... sort of.

"I eat pop tarts too!" Keith decides to respond.

"Dude. Roomie. Mullet man. You can't just eat pasta and pop tarts. You'll, like, die or something," Lance tells him through the door.

Keith just frowns at the door. Maybe if he ignores him then he'll go away.

After a few moments of silence, Lance starts talking again.

"Like dude, I would know. There was this one time when my parents went on vacation and it was me in charge of all of my little siblings since my other siblings were in college, and so like, I didn't know how to make anything. And I mean, all I knew how to make was microwaveable dishes. So for, like, five days all we had was microwave dinners and turkey sandwiches. You wouldn't _believe_ how disgusting turkey sandwiches can get after you've eaten them for five days straight. I mean, I had to pack all of the younger kids' lunches so I couldn't put any mayonnaise on the sandwiches or anything in case it spoiled or something. So it was just plain turkey. Gross."

"Oh my god," Keith whispers to Red. "Does he _ever_ shut up?"

The answer is no, and Lance keeps on talking.

"So mamá and papá definitely came back home a week later and apparently when you don't have a balanced enough diet, you get really sickly looking and sleepy? So my parents come back to my siblings and I looking like we were fresh out of hell. So, like, every day after that we were forced to take vitamins and stuff because mamá worries that we'll all die or something without her constantly there making sure we eat right."

Keith gives Red a look that says ' _can you believe this guy?_ ' Red looks just as annoyed as Keith does.

"Dude, if you don't come out of there and eat some waffles, I'm going to keep standing here and talking. I don't have work until 2 PM. That's close to 8 hours of me bothering you. And I grew up with a house that had seven other kids in it, so I can get _pretty_ annoying," Lance says.

Keith almost feels threatened, because he does not doubt Lance's bothersome factor can get higher than a simple story.

"Okay fine, it looks like I'm going to be here a while."

Lance then proceeds to say "Mullet man" in quick succession for about ten minutes before he starts rambling again. By that point, Keith is ready to do _anything_ to get him to _shut the hell up_.

So Keith carefully places Red on his bed before storming over to the door and flinging it open. The only problem with this plan was the fact that Lance must have gotten tired of standing at some point and decided to sit down against the door, so when Keith opened it, Lance came tumbling down and smacking his head against the floor.

"Fuck!" Lance exclaimed loudly from the ground by Keith's feet.

Keith just blinked at Lance and shrugged, moving around the fallen boy. Keith walked around Lance, making his way over to the kitchen with Red at his heels. He notices that Red hisses at Lance when she trots past him and he can't help but feel pleased.

Keith discovers that—true to his word—Lance has made waffles, _two plates_ of waffles. Lance had obviously made waffles with the intention of making Keith eat some too. Keith couldn't help but feel warm at that thought. Other than Shiro and Matt, nobody really had gone out of their way to do much of anything for Keith. It was... nice of Lance to do that for him.

But that didn't mean Keith wasn't annoyed with him.

Keith picks up a plain waffle off of one of the plates and waves it on Lance's direction to say _you see this? I'm eating something other than pop tarts and pasta._

Keith takes a small bite out of the waffle and decides that yeah, for a store bought waffle it's pretty good. He hasn't had waffles since he moved out of Shiro and Matt's apartment over a month ago. He picks up one of the plates and starts to head back to his room.

"Don't you want butter or syrup or something?" Lance asks from the floor.

"No," Keith says curtly.

He doesn't eat his waffles or pancakes with syrup that often, and never with butter. Also, he doesn't have any in the apartment. But that's not the point.

He steps over Lance's outstretched legs and waits for Red to follow. She glares at Lance as she steps over his legs and hisses quietly when he reaches out to pet her. Lance recoils his hand and shifts so that he's stretched out from wall to wall in the middle of the doorway. Keith's pretty sure he did that on purpose because now Keith can't close the door without moving Lance.

Keith just mentally shrugs and sits cross legged on his bed, ignoring the fact that Lance is obviously staring at him. He unplugs his phone from its charger and decides to play that one cat game Pidge had made him get a few months ago. Hopefully if he ignores Lance for long enough, the guy will leave him alone.

Red seems to get the same idea and curls up next to Keith, eying his waffles hungrily. Keith alternates between tearing off bits of waffle for himself and tearing off pieces for Red.

"You've trained her really well," Lance says abruptly, startling Keith.

When Keith looks at him in a confused manner, Lance decides to elaborate.

"She doesn't eat the waffles unless you give her the pieces. That's pretty impressive," Lance explains. "Cats are hard to train because they're stubborn."

"I didn't train her. She's just smart," Keith admits, handing Red another waffle piece.

Lance hums to himself, and Keith isn't sure what that means so he decides not to comment on it.

Keith switched to another game for a while, and when he glances at where Lance is sitting, he notices the other has pulled out his phone too. Keith finds himself relaxing once he notices that he's not being scrutinized like before.

For a moment, the silence feels less awkward and tense and more like companionable silence. Keith thought that Shiro was the only person who could make silence comfortable, but apparently he was wrong.

But then Lance has to open his big mouth.

"Do you wanna go grocery shopping with me?" Lance asks, breaking the ease that was beginning to settle between them.

Keith frowns and tenses up again.

"No."

"Why not?" Lance asks. "It'll be fun!"

_Why not?!?_ Keith wants to scream. _Because we don't know each other! Because we're just roommates! Because I'm a generally awkward person and you don't seem to be the type that ever shuts up and that's definitely going to make me uncomfortable!_

Instead of yelling his thoughts at Lance, he decides to take the indifferent roommate approach.

"Because I don't want to," Keith answers.

"Come on! It'll be good to get to know each other! Plus, I definitely can't pay for all of the groceries we desperately need by myself."

Keith thinks Lance might be joking about that last part, but he can't be sure. It wouldn't surprise him if it were true. They're both college students with minimum wage jobs, so money is a little tight in general. Not to mention the fact that Keith admittedly has very few edible food items in the apartment other than pop tarts and noodles, so they'll need a lot of food to have full cupboards and a full fridge.

When Keith takes too long to answer, Lance starts talking again.

"You can't survive on pasta and pop tarts alone, dude. I'm going shopping, and you're coming with me," Lance tells him.

Keith decides to be logical about this.

"What good would me helping you buy groceries do? I can't cook, so either way I'll just be eating pop tarts and pasta," Keith says.

"I'll teach you to cook! I'm so much better at cooking than I used to be, thanks to my old roommate!" Lance says.

Dammit, Lance seems even more excited now.

After indifference and logic fail Keith, he goes with Plan C, the C stands for childish.

"I'm not going and you can't make me," Keith pouts, turning his attention back to his phone.

From the corner of Keith's eye he sees Lance stand up, and for a split second he thinks he's won. But then Lance snatches up his wallet from the dresser beside the door and Keith realizes he's made a terrible mistake for letting Lance live with him.

"If you don't come with me, I'll just spend all of your money on whatever _I_ want, and let me tell you, I'm a distracted shopper. One time, Hunk made me go get stuff for lasagna and I came back with two eggplants and a box of strawberries three hours later. You do _not_ want me shopping with your money by myself," Lance says, sifting through Keith's wallet threateningly.

Keith is about to tell him to go for it, but then he realizes he went to the bank yesterday and took out roughly 100 dollars because he had to pay his water bill manually instead of online.

Fuck.

Lance smirks like he knows he's won, and Keith begrudgingly admits to himself that Lance won, this time.

Lance and Keith leave the house at 7 and Keith's pretty sure he's been blackmailed. Who the hell does Lance think he is?

*****

As soon as they enter the nearest Walmart, Keith wants to be dead. Lance almost immediately stops to talk to a woman and her kids while getting a cart. Keith stands awkwardly in the background while the woman's husband looks at Keith with the same miserable look that Keith's pretty sure is on his own face.

Once Lance is done chatting up the lady, he immediately sprints towards the Halloween candy that's for sale in the front aisles. Keith just pushes the cart after him while feeling like a babysitter. After _ooohing_ and _aaahing_ over candy and costumes for ten minutes, Lance finally starts heading towards the grocery section.

Sadly for Keith, Lance wasn't lying about getting easily distracted. They pass by the section with movies and video games and Lance just _has_ to look at some new movie that came out last month, which then turns into Lance sifting through the gigantic bins of five dollar movies that are basically giant, annoying pits of despair.

Keith wants to cry.

He lets Lance sort through the bins for twenty minutes while one of the Walmart helpers on duty that keeps walking by looks at him with pity. After the fifth passerby to look at Keith with pity in their eyes, he finally snaps.

"Okay, that's it!" Keith all but yells.

He wraps a hand around Lance's arm and forcefully tugs him away from the movie bins.

"Dude, chill out," Lance says, looking annoyed.

"No!" Keith snaps. "I _won't_ chill out because we've been here for over a half hour and the only food items we've seen has been _Halloween candy_! Get your ass in gear, get your stupid groceries, and let's get the hell out of here!"

Lance huffs angrily and tears his arm out of Keith's grip to fold his arms defensively over his chest, but at least he has the decency to look properly cowed.

Keith breathes a sigh of relief when they finally make it to the grocery section of the store. He's so happy they've made it that he wants to cry. But then Lance sees the bakery and sprints away from Keith's side like a hyperactive child.

Keith feels himself shrivel up and die on the inside.

He lets out a string of colorful curse words as he makes his way over to the bakery, causing some moms to glare at him and cover their children's ears. One kid about ten or eleven years old gives Keith a thumbs up that lifts his spirits a little bit.

By the time Keith has made his way to the bakery area, Lance is gone. Like, completely gone. No trace of him is left here except an exhausted looking baker guy whose name tag says Justin who looks completely overwhelmed.

Keith can relate.

He sighs to himself and decides that Lance is probably just going to keep wandering off and not actually get any groceries. So, by default, Keith has to get groceries. Plus he has the cart, so that helps.

He decides that normal people often get bread while going to the store, so he heads over to grab a loaf. But there's way too many choices. There is literally a whole wall filled with different types of bread. Why do people need this many types of bread? It's just bread!

Keith stares at the words _whole grain, white_ , and _wheat_ for a while before settling on wheat bread. But then the real question is: what _brand_ of wheat bread? As a poor college student, Keith decides he's just going to pick the cheapest one. He doesn't think there will be much of a difference between brands anyway.

After picking up some flour, sugar, crackers, and four packages of pasta, Keith realizes he kind of _likes_ grocery shopping by himself. He feels like an adult.

Feeling quite proud of himself, Keith heads over to the vegetable and fruit area. He's made considerable headway in the decision between pre-cut carrots and whole carrots when a familiar face startles him out of his own head.

"Hey, buddy! What are you doing here?" Matt Holt asks.

"Uh..." is Keith's intelligent response.

Keith clears his throat and glances around to make sure Shiro isn't here. His words from when he had come back from that stupid meeting with Lance are ringing in Keith's ears.

_He'll be good for you, trust me. Lance is a good guy and he's really social. Something tells me he'll help you get out of the house more often._

And dammit, that meant Shiro was right. Because here Keith was, out of the house and in the world.

But thankfully it appeared that Shiro wasn't around to gloat right now.

"I'm here with my roommate. He blackmailed me into going grocery shopping with him," Keith admits.

Matt smiles and points to the carrots in Keith's hands.

"Get the whole ones. You have to cut and peel them yourself, but the pre-cut ones taste like chemicals," Matt says.

"Thanks," Keith says, his mouth quirking up into a small smile.

He tosses the whole carrots into the cart and feels satisfied that he's being an adult and making adult choices.

"Is Shiro with you?" Keith asks, examining the lettuce.

"Yeah. He found somebody he knew and started talking. I walked away."

Keith snorts at that. He is no stranger to shopping with Shiro. _Everybody_ knew him, either from his frat boy days, school, his residency at the nearest hospital, or just from being out and about. It was honestly easier to walk away and do most of the shopping while Shiro chatted with various people than stand there and wait for him to finish talking.

"Hey, Matt!" Shiro's voice carried through the store, causing Keith to cringe and turn around. "Look who I found!"

"Hey, Shiro!" Matt calls back playfully, pointing to Keith. "Look who I found!"

Shiro's eyes flick over to Keith who's doing everything to avoid looking in Shiro's general direction. As Shiro brings Lance forward, Keith notices that Lance actually has collected a few items while he ran loose around the store. In his arms, Lance has Halloween Oreos, two boxes of caprisuns, and a carton of orange juice.

When they get close enough to real conversation distance, Lance smiles apologetically to Keith and drops the items into Keith's cart.

Shiro looks at Keith and smirks.

"I believe this one belongs to you?" Shiro says, pushing Lance forward.

"Where'd you find him?" Keith deadpans, going back to examining the lettuce.

"For one," Lance interrupts, "don't talk to me like I'm not here. Two, I was looking for _you_."

"He was flirting with one of the ladies at the checkout," Shiro says.

Keith sighs deeply and rubs at his forehead.

"Why doesn't that surprise me," he says.

"I'm just surprised you're here, honestly," Matt says, and Keith kind of wants to punch him in the face for that.

"I told you, Keith," Shiro says smugly. "I knew he'd be a good influence."

"He's a terrible influence," Keith mutters loud enough for them all to hear.

"Hey! I'm a great influence! You'd be eating nothing but pop tarts and pasta if it weren't for me!" Lance exclaims, flinging his hands around dramatically.

Shiro gives Keith a disapproving look and opens his mouth to start lecturing.

"Sorry, gotta go!" Keith says too loudly, tossing a head of lettuce into the cart.

He latched on to Lance's arm and practically sprints away as fast as he can while pushing a cart.

Once they're far enough away, Keith slows down his pace and notices that Lance is staring at him again, except this time with a brilliant smile that makes Keith's breathing stop for a minute.

"Siblings, am I right?" Lance says, grinning brightly.

Keith finds himself returning Lance's smile, even if it _is_ more microscopic than a full blown grin like Lance's.

"Yeah," Keith says. "You got that right."

*****

Shiro and Matt continue their shopping through the fruits and vegetables. They really don't need much, but they had ran out of apples the other day and Matt had a craving. Honestly, Matt was so glad that he got an apple craving because that meant he got to meet Lance! That guy was going to be Keith's boyfriend some day. Matt had a sixth sense for that kind of thing.

"So," Shiro begins. "What'd you think of Lance?"

"He seems like a good guy. The two of them mesh really well together, I can tell. I'm surprised you picked up on it at all," Matt said.

"What do you mean?" Shiro asks, looking at Matt with confusion. "What did I pick up on?"

Matt snorts at his boyfriend's innocence and rolls his eyes. Seriously, he's know five year olds with better observation skills than Shiro.

"Honey, you know I love you, but sometimes you're super oblivious," Matt says, shaking his head.

"What?" Shiro asks innocently. "Do I need to be worried?"

Matt just smiles and pulls Shiro down into a chaste kiss.

"You're so cute. It's nothing to concern yourself with though."

_For now._

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and Comments are Much Appreciated. Thank you for reading and have a great day! :D


End file.
